Jephthah replied to the elders of Gilead, “Didn’t you hate me and drive me from my father’s house? Why then have you come to me now when you’re in trouble?”

“We’re going to die,” he said to his wife, “because we have seen God!”

He answered him, “We’re traveling from Bethlehem in Judah to the remote hill country of Ephraim, where I am from. I went to Bethlehem in Judah, and now I’m going to the house of the Lord. No one has taken me into his home,

the men of Israel would return to the battle. When Benjamin had begun to strike them down, killing about 30 men of Israel, they said, “They’re defeated before us, just as they were in the first battle.”